Land Trust Alliance Statement on the U.S. President’s 30x30 Executive Order
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‘This Is an Audacious and Timely Conservation Challenge’
The nation’s land trusts are ready and willing to help private landowners conserve their lands at this ambitious scale. WASHINGTON (PRWEB) January 27, 2021 The Land Trust Alliance, a national land conservation organization working to save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation across America, today welcomed the United States president’s executive order that commits to the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and oceans by 2030. The following statement can be attributed to Andrew Bowman, president & CEO of the Land Trust Alliance:
“A pause on drilling and fracking is good news, but only if it is followed by a strong plan to permanently ban all dirty energy extraction on public lands,” Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said Tuesday in a statement responding to Biden’s forthcoming moratorium.
“The simple truth,” Hauter added, “is that we need to stop drilling and fracking everywhere, as soon as possible. The federal government has the power and the moral responsibility to get off fossil fuels, and doing so on publicly owned land sends a positive message that the Biden administration is serious about confronting this issue head-on.”
It isn’t far-fetched to say some Aspen environmentalists cried tears of joy when Joseph Biden replaced Donald Trump as president on Tuesday.
The staff at Aspen Center for Environmental Studies couldn’t watch the ceremony together because of the pandemic, but they shared a sentiment.
“The mood was elation,” ACES President and CEO Chris Lane said. “We all watched the inauguration and cried.”
A photographer takes a picture of the namesake geologic feature in the Bears Ears National Monument in December 2017. Aspen-based Ecoflight helped with the process that got the monument designated. Now it will help get it restored.
Climate justice and Indigenous rights advocates commended the decision to put the progressive Native American congresswoman from New Mexico in charge of the department overseeing 500 million acres of federal land calling the move promising for the responsible development of clean energy infrastructure and for the reversal of the fossil fuel industry’s harmful legacy of extraction and pollution on land belonging to the U.S. public and tribal nations.
“This is a big deal,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
This is a big deal.
Historic appointment. A visionary Native woman in charge of federal lands. Unequivocally progressive. Green New Deal champion. Exquisitely experienced.@RepDebHaaland sister, you are going to do such a great job. I am so proud of you and the movement.
Support ‘Thirty by thirty’ to save nature
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Growing up, Maine was always a wilderness to me a place blanketed by trees, populated by moose and a few hardy souls. Later, I learned that was not exactly true (after all, there are deer too). In all seriousness though, visiting the mountains and forests of Maine made me realize that this is where I wanted to be.
But things are changing.
Across the nation, we are losing our wild places, little chunks of ourselves bit by bit. As environmental devastation encroaches and the impacts of climate change continue to mount, the cost of inaction is steep. More and more species are threatened or going extinct. The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming bodies of water in the world, which already is impacting the lobster fishery. These problems are happening to us, right now.